One day after Julian Assange was granted Ecuadorian citizenship, the Wikileaks founder tweeted a cryptic picture of a famous 1918 chess match in which Cuban chess master José Raúl Capablanca defeats U.S. champion Frank Marshall using a pawn.

Theories naturally began to swirl in various corners of the internet, with some suggesting Assange’s tweet is a message to his followers that he, “the White King” is safe. Others took the “white king” to mean President Trump – who is well protected while a pawn is used to win the match.

Confirming reports that the Wikileaks founder has been granted Ecuador citizenship, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says they have granted naturalization to Julian Assange, amid “fears of threats to Assange’s life from third parties.”

At the end of January a news article appeared, “Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies,” and has resurfaced again and again on the internet. Posted on progressive websites such as Reader Supported News, Daily Kos, “The PeoplesVoice.org”, “ThinkGlobalGreen.org”, the story often comes with maps of the affected area, and include pictures of indigenous peoples living peaceably with nature or protesting against oil drilling.

Kerry obviously threatened them, as it has repeatedly over the last fifty years….if in doubt please read “New Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John Perkins, it explains how the UasA has covertly taken over the world via bribes, corruption and blackmail in favour of Global Corporations, and if leaders rejected their advances they were either accidentally killed in plane crashes or ousted by engineered coup.”

The governments of the US and Ecuador have denied that they conspired to silence Julian Assange, after the WikiLeaks founder’s internet access was cut off at his London embassy home to stop him releasing damaging information about Hillary Clinton’s US election campaign.

Ecuador confirmed late on Tuesday that it had intervened at the weekend to temporarily restrict Assange’s internet access, pointing to a “wealth” of WikiLeaks publications “impacting on the US election campaign” as the reason. WikiLeaks has released successive dumps of damaging material over recent months from inside the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign, which the US government has blamed on Russian state hacking.

It is unlikely that Ecuador, supporting whistleblower Julian Assange, deprived him from the opportunity to use internet, says Peter Van Buren, former officer, US State Department’s Foreign Service. The countries like the US have much more reasons for that, he added.

According to Wikileaks’ twitter feed, Ecuador cut off Julian Assange’ internet access on Saturday. The same day more than a dozen Wikileaks members reportedly had their Internet and phone connections cut.

RT:Wikileaks claims Assange’s Internet access has been cut by Ecuador. What do you make of this? Could there be a third party involved here?

Peter Van Buren: It is difficult to surmise an explanation why Ecuador would have cut his internet services. Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy for so long; there has been no political change in the Ecuadorian government. I can’t even take a guess why they might have done that to him.

At the same time, imagining the reasons a third party might have cut that internet access are fairly easy to do. Assange has embarrassed the US government. The US government has made claims that he is working with the Russians, and that the Russians with Assange are trying to disrupt or interfere in America’s election. And we’ve seen reports over the weekend that the US is planning some form of retaliation in cyberspace. It is not unlikely that that retaliation may include poking the bear in the nose, perhaps starting with cutting off Assange’s internet access.

RT:Presuming that was Ecuador who cut the internet connection, do you think there is a possibility they were forced to do that?

Just moments ago, the Ecuadorian government confirmed that it intentionally cut Julian Assange’s internet access due to his publication of a “wealth of documents impacting the U.S. election.” Despite what seems to be the Ecuadorian government caving to political pressure from the Obama administration, the statement takes special caution to reassure everyone that the decision was in response to “sovereign decisions alone” and that Ecuador “does not yield to pressure from other states”….sure, though we do wonder how many drafts John Kerry’s staffers went through at the State Department before finally approving these comments for dissemination.

The following tweets posted by WikiLeaks yesterday set off a massive bout of speculation over the fate of Julian Assange who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for nearly 4 years. There has been much speculation that the sudden change in support for Assange from the Ecuadorian government was prompted by political leverage being asserted by the Obama administration to thwart the release of emails that are proving to be very damaging to the Hillary presidential campaign.

Julian Assange’s internet link has been intentionally severed by a state party. We have activated the appropriate contingency plans.

Now, just this morning, WikiLeaks sent the following tweet, quoting “multiple US sources,” saying that, in fact, John Kerry personally asked the Ecuadorian government to shut down Assange and his leaks of Clinton’s emails.

It seems that the Obama administration’s efforts to save the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton is finally starting to yield tangible results as WikiLeaks just provided the following update that Julian Assange was cut off from using the Internet at the Ecuadorian embassy in London effective Saturday evening.

Clearly the lack of internet for Assange hasn’t slowed the release of Hillary’s emails as Part 9 of the Podesta emails were released yesterday and Part 10 was just released a few hours ago.

Of course, this comes just a few days after the Obama administration announced overt plans to escalate a cyber war with Russia over allegations they were behind the hacking of Hillary’s private email server.

Certainly, one has to wonder what this means for the future of Assange as clearly the Obama administration has applied sufficient pressure on the Ecuadorian government such that they have started to cave on their support of him. Perhaps we should be checking flight logs for mysterious planes landing in Quito with billions of Swiss Francs on board.

“Okay, boys, here’s what we do. We’ve got this old virus called Zika. It’s been around for 60 years that we know of. It never caused anything serious. A real dud. But we’ve got to explain all these babies born with small heads and brain damage. We’ve got to protect some important people and shield them from heavy blame. So let’s bring back Zika. Even though very few mothers who give birth to babies with defects have the dud-virus, we can finesse that. People are idiots. So let’s build up Zika into a terrifying killer. Get our PR folks moving. Spread some money around. You know, the usual. And we make out on the back-end with a Zika vaccine.”

Massive cleaning operation at landmark Sambadrome comes as health minister admits country is “badly losing” war against the virus

Concerns over the Zika virus reached new heights on Tuesday after Brazil sent fumigators into Rio de Janeiro’s world-famous carnival venue that will help host the Olympic games amid intensified efforts to control the mosquito-borne infection.

The call for the loyalty from the armed forces comes amid political tensions in the country.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa called on the police and military Monday to be prepared for destabilizing attempts by opposition groups ahead of a national strike set for mid-August.

“We need to be ready to confront them with the weapons of the law and the Constitution,” Correa said according to local news agency La Hora. ”To fight for the homeland, dear soldiers — without hoping for compensations — that’s the vocation of the truly uniformed.”

Obama is no man of the people. He never was throughout his political career. He serves powerful monied interests exclusively.

As an Illinois state senator, he represented Chicago real estate interests at the expense of Black communities they wanted gentrified. He disgraces the office he holds. He remains a front man for wealth, power and privilege.

When Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa made his latest weekly address, he had some big news for conservationists around the globe. The President said his country had just broken the world record for reforestation.

Thousands of people had joined in to plant 647,250 trees of more than 200 species. The seedlings were planted all over Ecuador, taking advantage of the country’s wide range of climatic and geographical regions. New trees were introduced everywhere, from the Pacific coast to the high Andes and low-lying tropical Amazon basin.

According a Tweet by Ecuador’s Environment Minister, Lorena Tapia, 44,883 people took part in the record-breaking dig-in which covered more than 4,942 acres.